S.P.E.W. Social Justice Mini-Conference Fall 2017: Suggested Topics

Social Justice Issues in Harry Potter (and how they can be related to our world):

• Blood Status

• The Rise of Voldemort into power

• House Elf enslavement

• Prejudice against centaurs and werewolves

• The mostly quiet takeover of the Ministry of Magic by death eaters and the subsequent horror of the “Muggleborn Registration Comission”

• The Muggleborn Registration Commission

• Biased and ill-reported news in the Daily Prophet

• Potterwatch and rogue news broadcasts (Authority and who has it)

• The Concept of love conquering all

• How to be a Neville Longbottom

• Dumbledore’s Army

• The Order of the Pheonix

• Aurors (aka wizard cops) and the role they played in the ministry and how they subverted that role (like Kingsley Shacklebolt)

• The Battle of Hogwarts

• Dolores Umbridge and her edicts, views on punishment in schools, and how/why she’s more hated than Voldemort by fans

Social Justice Movements/Events

• Black Lives Matter

• Women’s Movement (including recent Marches)

  • Possible resources to consult::  

    • Poem About My Rights by June Jordan

    • A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

    • Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

    • Writings of Christine de Pizan

    • Ms and Bitch magazines (print issues available in the Library)

• 99%

• LGBTQ+

  • Possible sources to consult:

    • The Advocate and Curve magazines (print issues available in the Library)

• “Occupy” movement

• Code Pink

• Civil Rights Movement

  • Possible readings to consult:

    • Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.

    • The Autobiography of Malcolm X

    • Can You See Them? by Pearl Cleage

    • Various writings related to how white churches responded to the Civil Rights Movement (our own college archives can be a resource)

    • Writings of the Black Panthers

• Dakota Pipeline/Native American movements

  • Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement

• Animal/Environmental Rights movements

• Peace movements

• Arab Spring

• Ecofeminism

• Anti-Apartheid

• Disability Rights movements

• Mens’ Rights Movement

• Sex-positive Movement

• Global Suffrage movements

• Anti-Slavery movements

• Farm Aid

• Band Aid/Live Aid

• Human Trafficking movements

• Local community movements​

• Sanctuary movements (cities, churches)

Sports:

• Financial profit vs player well-being

• Social justice protests related to international competitions (e.g. Olympics)

• Response to social justice issues by individual athletes or teams

  • Refusing to play

  • Wearing special insignias

  • The ousting of Kaepernick by the NFL)

College:

• Social Justice issues addressed in college curriculums

• Athletics - representation/treatment of various minorities

• Sexual violence on school/college campuses

• Use of Native American mascots

• Free Speech controversies

• Treatment of Transgender students

• Issue of Microaggressions

• Trigger warnings

Social Justice Organizations and their roles in society

• HPA (The Harry Potter Alliance)

• SPLC

• ACLU

• HRC

• NOW

• The Malala Fund

• UN commissions (various)

• Organizations of the past

• Local organizations (small and large)

Government

• Healthcare

• Freedom of speech

• Surveillance of regular citizens (both on camera and via the computer)

• Civil Rights legislation

• Sanctuary cities

Prison issues:

• Overcrowding

• Poor living conditions

• Physical and verbal abuse of inmates

• Sexual assault from fellow prisoners and/or guards

• Mental health professional accessibility

• The SHU

• Rights to education

Technology:

• The ethics of tech work

• Where tech comes from and how it gets made

• Treatment of women in the tech industry

Media:

• Representation, misrepresentation, and/or underrepresentation of minority groups in:

  • Comic books

  • Literature

  • TV

  • Film

  • The News

  • Performance Art

  • Fine Art

Gaming:

• Gamergate

• Doxxing

• Consistent use of slurs, hate speech, and insults in online gaming venues

• Underage players being sexually harassed verbally in online gaming venues

• Players being harassed and/or threatened for gender, identity, sexuality, or race in online gaming venues

• Sexual harassment over live chat when gender/sexuality is known

Internet:

• Net Neutrality

• Surveillance & the chill effect on searching

• Online discrimination via algorithms

• Trolling

• Online Hate Crimes

• Cyberbullying

Oh, the Humanities!

• Social Justice issues as expressed/explored in Works of Literature (childrens, classics, contemporary, international)

• History: 

• The glossing over/sweetening/under representing the horrors of history and their role in how a country was shaped

• The celebration of historical figures that committed atrocities

• Display of flags

• Display of monuments

  • Taking down of monuments of historical figures with negative connotations

• As Represented in the Arts:

• Visual arts    

  • Possible resource: The Guerrilla Girls

• Film

• Music

• Theater

• Dance

• Architecture/design

Social justice as dictated by sacred religious texts.  A few examples:

• What do the sacred texts of a religion say about the care of the poor? The orphaned? The widowed(r/d)? The old? The non-religious?

• How have sacred texts been used to justify the subjugation of certain groups of people? How were they wrong?

• The popular theology of the ancient world assumed that wealth and prosperity went hand in hand with right living (example: Prosperity gospel). Is this view just?

• Issue of the very nature of justice:

  • Is justice simply the will of the all-powerful Creator, or can it be measured by standards that humanity can recognize?

• Does God comply with human conceptions of justice?

• Possible resources to consult:

  •  The Good Book by Peter Gomes, the Book of Job

  • Sojourners magazine (print issues available in the Library)

• Corporate America's social justice responsibilities
  • Possible resources to consult:
    • The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits by Milton Friedman
    • Justice as Fairness by John Rawls
    • The Ford Pinto Memo
    • Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts by Karl Marx
    • Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich​
• Global corporate issues related to social justice

Mass Shootings & bombings in recent history:

• Charlottesville

• Charleston, S.C.

• Pulse Nightclub

• Sikh Temple Shooting in oak creek, wisconsin

• Colorado Springs bombing of the NAACP

• Jacksonville, FL bombing of an islamic center

• Glendale, Arizona bombing of a mosque by a chemical bomb

• (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/hate-incidents?)